Characteristics Of Online Reviews Research Articles

The Influence of Online Reviews on the Purchasing Decisions of Travel Consumers

In this study, we investigate the impact of online review characteristics on consumers’ purchasing decisions in the context of spatial distance. We consider the product experience of online travel routes, geographical location characteristics, and price adjustment factors, as well as the dynamics between consumers and businesses during the booking of travel routes. Through empirical research and large-scale data simulation experiments, we have found that the variability in attributes of tourist routes significantly influences the user recommendation rate, while the overall rating has a positive moderating effect. Furthermore, the number of reviews negatively moderates the relationship between them. Additionally, the product information and service quality of tourist routes also significantly affect the recommendation rate. Finally, we propose a management strategy for tourism route managers to enhance user recommendation rates and achieve greater benefits.

The joint effect of online reviews and manager responses in driving company ratings

The current study extends the literature on firm-customer online relationship building by jointly assessing customers' opinions and firms' responses to understand their impact on firm ratings. This study implements text analytics and sentiment analysis on customer reviews and manager responses. Specifically, the impact of message sentiment (emotional versus rational) and textual characteristics of online reviews and manager responses is examined. Finally, the assessment focuses on the impact of hotel customer reviews and manager responses sentiment on hotel ratings. Data collection implements a web crawler to gather a consistent panel of user-level activity from TripAdvisor. The final data includes customer reviews, manager responses, and hotel ratings over a three-year period. Current contributions provide further insights into how companies can utilize online reviews and manager responses to increase online ratings of their firms. Managerial implications suggest using emotional responses with short sentences to improve online ratings.

But it was supposed to be healthy! How expected and actual nutritional value affect the content and linguistic characteristics of online reviews for food products

AbstractConsumers are choosing to purchase food products from retailers through online channels rather than brick‐and‐mortar channels. While online reviews play a crucial role in influencing online purchases, scant work has examined how consumers write reviews for food products. We argue that the nutritional value of the food is a key aspect of product performance and apply expectation‐disconfirmation theory to examine whether pre‐purchase expectations about a food product's nutritional value and disconfirmation of these expectations have a significant effect on online review content and linguistic characteristics. Using text‐mining approaches to analyze Amazon data, we find that pre‐purchase expectations, postpurchase performance, and disconfirmation regarding nutritional value affect both review content and linguistic characteristics, including review length, diversity, readability, subjectivity, and sentiment. While research suggests that postpurchase product performance is the main influence on online review writing behavior, this research shows that the pre‐purchase phase also plays a key role.

Examining the structural relationships of Google local guides’ online review characteristics and star ratings

ABSTRACT This study examined how online review characteristics contribute to the star ratings of the Top Quick Service Restaurant in the Philippines. We collected a total of 8258 reviews through Data Miner scraping tool. Results showed that the reviews made by the Google local guides, in general, were readable, brief, and more positive in valence. While the SEM results demonstrated causal relationships of review characteristics to star rating, readability and positive tone showed a weak positive effect. In contrast, review length and negative tone had a high negative effect. Positive and negative emotions did not affect GLG’s given star ratings. Implications are discussed in this paper.

Identifying multidimensional effects of online reviews on consumers’ automobile purchase behaviours in China: linking observational learning with economic outcomes

ABSTRACT Based on 1,087,248 individual online reviews for 2007–2020 collected from the websites of AutoHome and Sohu Auto using the Python method, rating, volume, variance, and many other characteristics of online reviews are generated for 808 automobile products sold in mainland China. Using the observational learning (OL) framework to establish the relationship between automotive consumers’ purchasing behaviours and the display of online reviews, the econometric results reveal that, at the aggregate level, automotive consumers seem to respond more significantly to the volume/variance of online reviews (i.e. hedonic cues) rather than the average rating (i.e. utilitarian cues) for producing adequate OL. However, at the sub-categorical level, consumers are more likely to produce adequate OL regarding ratings representing utilitarian attributes while effects of most of the variance (i.e. hedonic cues) are limited. These findings imply that consumers are more likely to perceive automobile products as ‘more hedonic and less utilitarian’, but an overly complicated online review system forces consumers to simplify the OL process that prioritizes utilitarian attributes, as hedonic information is difficult to be understood. This study provides theoretical and empirical insights about how consumers respond differently to various online review characteristics for products with no clear boundary in a hedonic/utilitarian distinction.

Asymmetric effects of extreme-moderate online reviews in the language-satisfaction relationship

The intercultural nature of tourism makes interpersonal communication a critical element that influences individuals’ experience and, in turn, their satisfaction. The existing research predominantly focuses on indirect communication (such as advertising). This study contributes to the literature by examining the effect of the reviews of language use on overall satisfaction and by looking into the dyad formed by the extreme vs. moderate character of the reviews and their sign (positive vs. negative). The analysis of 48,491 online reviews shows the effect of language use opinions on overall satisfaction, with extreme opinions having a more significant impact than moderate opinions. A more interesting and relevant impact is the departure from the well-established cognitive negativity bias characteristics of online reviews: extreme reviews have a symmetric impact on satisfaction, and moderate reviews present asymmetric effects. Both outcomes are a deviation from this cognitive bias, and relevant implications are derived.

User-generated reviews and the financial performance of restaurants

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the impact of selected characteristics (rating, volume and variability) of online user-generated reviews on the bottom-line profitability of restaurants.Design/methodology/approachRestaurant-level review data are extracted from TripAdvisor and matched with firm-level data from the financial reports gathered from the Belfirst database of Bureau van Dijk. The resulting sample contains data on 2,297 Belgian firms over the period 2007–2018, for which 134,831 reviews are investigated. The author’s regression model of firm-level profitability is estimated against online review characteristics and various financial control variables, including past profitability. This research model and estimation technique address the endogeneity concerns that typically weaken this kind of study.FindingsWhile comparable studies on hotels document a positive association between review characteristics and profitability, the authors find no relationship between review rating, volume and variability in the profitability of restaurants.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the format of the financial reports of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), data on turnover and cost of materials/services was not available for most restaurants in the sample, limiting our potential for analysis. In addition, our assessment of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) was limited to measures derived from user-generated reviews on TripAdvisor.Practical implicationsIn the literature on eWOM, the importance of online reputation is hardly disputed, especially in the context of the hospitality sector. However, most research to date has focused on the hotel sector and top-line measures of success. This study uses restaurant-level financial data, focuses on bottom-line profitability, considers potential endogeneity issues and pays careful attention to the estimation technique. The results fail to establish a direct relationship between eWOM metrics and financial performance and are surprising, meriting further investigation to establish the underlying causes.Originality/valueIn contrast to prior studies on the impact of eWOM on restaurant performance at a group level, this study examines the impact on unit-level profitability, taking into account several potential sources of estimation bias. In addition, the authors challenge this finding with a battery of sensitivity tests, revalidating the absence of a relationship in each case.

Coordinating supply-related scarcity appeals with online reviews.

Online reviews play an important role in consumer purchase decisions and have received much research attention. However, previous research has typically examined the effects of online review characteristics independent of firm marketing messages. We argue that how much average review rating influences consumers’ decisions depends on the presence of a scarcity appeal and its congruence with review volume information. Through a lab experiment and analyses of real-world data from Amazon.com, we show that claiming a product to have limited supply moves consumers toward more heuristic processing but only when review volume is consistent with the scarcity information. In contrast, when review volume is incongruent with the supply-based scarcity message, the incongruence prompts consumers to process information more carefully and reduces their reliance on review valence.

Influence of travel distance and travel experience on travelers' online reviews: price as a moderator

PurposeBuilding on a small body of work, the authors' study aims to investigate some important antecedents of online review characteristics in the Chinese restaurant industry.Design/methodology/approachUsing a data set of restaurant reviews collected from a most popular review platform in China, the authors conduct a series of analyses to examine the influence of travel experience and travel distance on travelers' review characteristics in terms of review rating and media richness. The moderating effect of restaurant price on the influence is also investigated.FindingsTravelers with a longer travel distance and more travel experience tend to provide higher and lower online ratings, respectively, which can be explained by the construal level theory (CLT) and the expectation-confirmation theory (ECT), respectively. Furthermore, these strong feelings can then induce travelers to post enriched reviews with more pictures, more words and more affective words to release consumption tension. Besides, restaurant price can moderate these relationships.Originality/valueDistinguished from most studies which mainly focus on the consequences of online review characteristics or antecedents of review helpfulness, the authors pay attention to the effects of travelers' individual differences in terms of travel distance and travel experience on travelers' online reviewing behavior. In addition to review rating, the authors also focus on media richness in terms of visual and textual information. The authors' research findings can benefit restaurant consumers and managers for their online word-of-mouth utilization and management.

Emotions for attention in online consumer reviews: the moderated mediating role of review helpfulness

PurposeWith the increasing importance of e-commerce to the economy and people's lives, user-generated content, such as electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) represented by online reviews, has exploded. On one hand, it is of great significance for review consumers (readers) to identify high-quality ones from a large number of existing reviews to assist their purchase decision. On the other hand, how to use appropriate strategies to make their published reviews more concerned by others is also important to review generators (reviewers). The purpose of this study is to understand the comprehensive relationship among review characteristics, review helpfulness and receiver attention.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses the online movie reviews obtained from the most popular review platform in China to conduct multiple empirical analyses.FindingsThe results show that the review helpfulness plays a mediating role between the emotional characteristics of online reviews and the receiver attention, and such a mediating role is more significant among reviewers with rich review expertise. The reviewer's expertise also moderates the impact of review emotions on review helpfulness.Originality/valueThis work studies eWOM receiver involvement, which can ultimately impact product sales, but seldom be investigated in eWOM domain. Therefore, this research can enrich studies on eWOM and provide valuable practical implications as well.

Efeitos de Interação entre Avaliações On-line e Características do Produto na Confiança do Consumidor

ABSTRACT Objective: the present study analyzes the relationship between online reviews and consumer trust in online stores, considering the conjoint effects of the characteristics of online reviews and product offers in the social commerce context. Methods: the study is characterized as a laboratory experiment that simulated the environment of an online store considering different scenarios, totaling 602 cases for analysis. Results: the results indicate that the relationship established between the consumer and the reviewers moderates the relationship between reviews and trust, suggesting that positive and negative reviews from friends and acquaintances affect the consumer’s trust more than those reviews made from strangers. However, this effect is not always significant, depending on the price offered. Still, the type of the product moderates the effect of the online reviews on trust when the store displays higher prices than the competition. In such cases, the impact of reviews on trust is more intense in high-value product advertisements. Conclusions: the study can help managers and website developers create more appropriate processes and strategic alternatives in the social commerce context, based on a better understanding of the relationships among the variables studied in this research.

Product recommendation using online reviews with emotional preferences

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop a novel recommendation method using online reviews with emotional preferences for facilitating online purchase decisions. This leads to better use of information-rich online reviews for providing users with personalized recommendations.Design/methodology/approachA novel method is developed for producing personalized recommendations in online purchase decision-making. Such a method fuses the belief structure and the Shapley function together to effectively deal with the emotional preferences in online reviews and adequately tackle the interaction existent between product criteria with the use of a modified combination rule for making better online recommendations for making online purchase decisions.FindingsAn example is presented for demonstrating the applicability of the method for facilitating online purchase. The results show that the recommendation using the proposed method can effectively improve customer satisfaction with better purchase decisions.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed method can better utilize online reviews for satisfying personalized needs of consumers. The use of such a method can optimize interface design, refine customer needs, reduce recommendation errors and provide personalized recommendations.Originality/valueThe proposed method adequately considers the characteristics of online reviews and the personalized needs of customers for providing customers with appropriate recommendations. It can help businesses better manage online reviews for improving customer satisfaction and create greater value for both businesses and customers.

Differential effects of online review characteristics on innovators and imitators in new product adoption

The effects of online user reviews on new product adoption are important in managing interactive marketing communications. However, such effects may vary, depending on the nature of the review characteristics and consumers. In this paper, we empirically investigate the differential effects of online review characteristics on new product adoption for two types of consumers (innovators and imitators) and how such effects may be altered by different dimensions of review characteristics. Using a data set collected from Amazon, we find that the differential effects exist, but are moderated by the dimensions of review characteristics: the numerical review characteristics (i.e. review volume, review rating, and rating variation) have larger effects on imitators than on innovators, but the review textual characteristics (i.e. review emotional content) show the opposite effects. We further discuss the managerial implications of our research findings.

Does managerial response moderate the relationship between online review characteristics and review helpfulness?

ABSTRACT Managerial response describes how hotel managers communicate with online reviewers and manage their customer relationships. The purpose of this study is to examine the moderating effect of managerial response on the relationship between review characteristics and review helpfulness. Based on cue utilization theory, this study employs the negative binomial regression to analyse data from TripAdvisor.com. The study results indicate the extrinsic cues (managerial response length and response speed) moderate the effect of intrinsic cues (review sentiment and review length) on review helpfulness. The negative effect of review sentiment on helpfulness is weakened as response length and speed increase; the positive effect of review length on helpfulness is enhanced when response speed is fast, whereas this impact is weakened as response length increases. This study also discusses practical significance for hotel managers, consumers, and online travel platforms.

The Impact of Online Review Characteristics and New product type on Purchase Intention

본 연구는 온라인 리뷰의 수와 평점과 같은 온라인 리뷰의 특성이 구매의도에 미치는 영향이 신제품 유형에 따라 어떻게 달라지는지를 살펴보고자 하였다. 본 연구에서는 신제품 유형을 기존 제품에서 개선된 점진적 신제품과 기존 제품에서 제공하지 못한 새로운 기능과 혜택을 제공하는 혁신적 신제품으로 구분하였으며, 점진적 신제품을 구매할 때 보다 혁신적 신제품을 구매할 때에 온라인 리뷰의 평점보다 온라인 리뷰의 수가 구매결정에 미치는 영향력이 더 클 것으로 예상하였다. 이러한 가설을 검증하기 위해 2개의 실험연구를 진행하였다. 실증분석 결과, 2개의 실험연구에서 유사한 결과를 확인하였다. 실험 1에서 혁신적 신제품을 구매하는 사람들은 리뷰 평점이 높은 제품보다 리뷰 수가 많은 제품의 구매의도가 더 높은 것으로 나타났다. 실험 2에서도 실험 1과 유사한 결과를 확인할 수 있었으며, 이러한 조절효과가 시장 불확실성에 의해 매개됨을 확인하였다.

A systematic review of perceived value toward online review on s-commerce platform

Online reviews play a significant role in supporting consumers to make purchase decisions across provided platforms. Many studies examine the characteristics of online reviews and their impacts, nevertheless, only a few studies examine the perceived value from online reviews. This study provides the integration view by utilizing the systematic approach to synthesize 36 academic papers out of 661 searched papers between January 1st, 2011, and December 22nd, 2019. The contribution of researchers in studying the perceived value is increasing significantly and continuously since 2018. There are two main types of online reviews regardless of online platforms: Expert-written reviews and customer-written reviews. Perceived values can be derived from online review and be transmitted to online review simultaneously upon the content of studies. The framing of questions for a review focus on five key questions and to illustrate by providing the mind mapping of perceived value to reveal components and relationship among them. The finding emphasizes the research contents of existing research and research allocation, analysis of techniques used, theories, methodologies used, implications in different industrial sectors to enhance the understanding of this relevant information, ambiguous meanings, and development of areas that lack attention in the past decade. Besides, the indication of studies could identify the importance of perceived values that has a greater impact on consumers in the pre-stage of purchase decision.

Online Review Characteristics and Information Asymmetry Is it easy to switch between Online Shopping sites? A Case Study of Reviews from Amazon and Flipkart

Consumer characteristics and store attributes decide the store choice decision of consumers. To facilitate the switching process, physical formats create identical layout structures, shelf designs, staffing and billing desk. In similar lines, online stores also create features like similar website characteristics like the menu, creating shopping basket options, comparing product and billing process. Similar to Word-of-Mouth (WOM), online stores encourage and facilitate electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) communications through Online Consumer Reviews (OCR) in their websites. Many online buyers use the reviews of others, social media content and blogs in their decision process. To understand the distribution characteristics of the online reviews, in this research work, we analyze the online review from Amazon and Flipkart for the masks and sanitizers. In a review, star rating, review length and helpfulness of a review are visual characteristics that communicate the content faster than words and no research works compare their variation between two online sellers. We prove that there are significant differences exist in the distribution of review characteristics between the online retailers’ reviews. Two websites reviews vary in terms of star rating, review length and helpfulness votes. There are variations between Amazon and Flipkart reviews in general, and differences are observed in their brands sold also. Since the review characteristics and their distributions are unknown, this information asymmetry creates constraints for store switching behavior of online consumers.

Diversified Online Review Websites as Accelerators for Online Impulsive Buying: The Moderating Effect of Price Dispersion

Impulsive online buying is receiving more attention. This study finds that certain characteristics of online reviews lead consumers to buy impulsively online. Three constructs are used to investigate the inducements to engage in impulsive online buying, namely perceived enjoyableness of online reviews, reviewer reputation, and vividness of product presentation. We also examine the moderating effect of perceived price dispersion (PPD) on impulsive online buying using stratified sampling, with 419 respondents participating. Reputable reviewers in diversified online review websites increase consumer attraction to similar products through vivid product reviews that comprehensively inform consumers about products. Moreover, the effectiveness of PPD to trigger impulsive purchases depends on consumer trust in product reviews (for products of the same value).

전시컨벤션 온라인 리뷰 특성이 관람객 태도, 만족 및 구전행동에 미치는 영향

전시컨벤션 온라인 리뷰 특성이 관람객 태도, 만족 및 구전행동에 미치는 영향

Distribution characteristics of star ratings in online consumer reviews

Purpose The star rating summarises the review content and conveys the message faster than other review components. Star ratings influence helpfulness of the reviews, and extreme reviews are considered as less helpful in the decision process. However, literature has rarely addressed variations in star ratings across product categories and variations between two online retailers. In this paper, the authors have compared the distribution of star ratings across 11 products and among the retailers. Design/methodology/approach Online reviews for 11 product categories have collected, and the authors compared the distribution of star ratings across 11 products and retailers. Correspondence analysis has been applied to show the association between star ratings and product categories for the e-retail firms. Findings The Amazon site contains proportionately more number of 1-star rated reviews than Flipkart. In Amazon reviews, few product categories are closely associated with 1-star and 2-star reviews, whereas no product categories are closely associated with 1-star and 2-star reviews in Flipkart reviews. The results indicate two distinct communication strategies followed by the firms in managing online consumer reviews. Research limitations/implications The authors did not analyse data across demographic details because of access restriction policies of the websites. Practical implications Understanding the distribution of review characteristics will improve the consumer’s decision-making ability and using online review content judiciously. Social implications This study’s results show significant insights on online retailing by providing cues in using shopping sites and online review characteristics of two prominent retailers. Originality/value This paper has brought out a distinct distribution pattern of online review between Amazon and Flipkart. Amazon allows a higher degree of negative contents, whereas Flipkart allows more number of positive reviews.